Animal caretakers, grounds keepers, and pet owners must routinely clean up animal waste from animal enclosures, yards, and other various locations where an animal would leave their waste. For most responsible individuals, the cleaning of animal waste requires them to handle the solid animal matter with either a glove or a cumbersome apparatus. While either situation carries its own disadvantages compared to the other, both current methods are generally considered to be messy, unpleasant, and in some cases difficult. While the unpleasant job of handling animal waste is inescapable for responsible individuals, apparatuses have been designed and created to minimize the various negative aspects associated with cleaning up animal waste.
The apparatuses developed for cleaning up animal waste can be largely placed into two categories that are distinguished by the means in which they collect solid animal waste. The first category of apparatuses utilizes a non-mechanical means of collecting waste. These devices typically require the user to move the apparatus into position shovel the solid waste matter into the apparatus. The second category of apparatuses utilizes a mechanical component to siphon the animal waste into a receptacle. These types of device function similarly to vacuums. Prior art in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,984,530, 6,618,898, 5,661,873, 7,003,846, 7,404,230, 5,771,531, 7,077,172, and 4,478,448 are systems for using suction to collect animal feces. These mechanical apparatuses function solely as a collection device for animal waste. While this aspect allows the apparatus to work well within its intended function, the specificity of the apparatus prevents the apparatus and its components from functioning in a capacity outside of their intended use, even if functionality or components overlap with other tasks. Additionally the specificity of these apparatuses results in some devices that are large and cumbersome. As a result these apparatuses can be difficult to use and store by users. This invention, describes an apparatus with unique features and components so that it can attach to a conventional leaf blower/vac system, for the purpose of collecting solid dog or solid pet waste, or excrement from mammals, also known as feces. This is a novel and unique approach, because it allows the consumer to purchase this invention as an attachment or accessory to a commercial off the shelf leaf blower/vacuum/mulcher product, one which the consumer may already own, and provide a superior method for collecting animal waste or various types of debris. This approach offers unique advantages to the consumer, as the need to purchase and maintain yet another motorized device, either gas or electric, is eliminated. Also eliminated is the need to store another bulky tool to perform the task, such as the device in U.S. Pat. No. 6,618,898. Creating an attachment device for a leaf blower/vacuum for the purpose of collecting animal waste, presents the same advantages of the patented multi use yard tools and innovative attachment devices that can be found in the prior art of granted US patents. In the Prior art, there are several examples of US patents granted to inventors who try to extend the applications of conventional leaf blowers. One such example is U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,560 which describes a Gutter Leaf-Blower apparatus that attaches an air nozzle on one end of a small lightweight, 6-8 foot rigid tube assembly and, in turn, connecting the input of the air nozzle to the output of an air blower with a flexible air hose. Another U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,159 describes a trash loosening brush kit attachment for the purpose of debris removal using a power blower, or leaf blower. Another such example is U.S. Pat. No. 4,713,858, Kelber Dec. 22, 1987, which describes a Leaf collection apparatus for blower-vacuums. In this invention a leaf collection apparatus is attached to a blower/vacuum. This device is an accessory that can be purchased for many of today's leaf blower/vacuum/mulcher systems.
The intent of this invention is to provide another function to a leaf blower/vacuum system, animal waste removal, with the addition of a specially designed attachment that addresses the risks and takes advantage of the unique features of a common leaf/blower/vac system.
This approach of creating a leaf blower/vacuum system attachment to collect animal waste will also allow manufactures of said off the shelf blower/vacuum/mulcher products to offer this product as an accessory to the product they already manufacture.
This invention was designed so that it would not require modifications to the blower/vacuum/mulcher product, in order to perform this function, and not do any harm to the blower/vacuum/mulcher in the process, nor cause an additional safety hazard to the user, nor require any complex tools or processes to attach and use the invention. The net benefit of this approach, is that a powerful, widely available, and low cost leaf blower vacuum/mulchers may be used with this attachment invention to provide additional function of collecting solid animal waste. This provides a more practical solution than the devices referenced in the prior art, all of which are basically stand alone vacuum systems with a built in vacuum source. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,661,873, the author claims blower/vacuum devices will not work for the collection of animal waste because: “Waste is sucked into the machine via the intake tube, across the impeller and out the blower end and into the bag. These types of machines will not work as animal waste vacuums as the waste and debris is smashed and crushed when it rams into the impeller or cut by a mulching blade and this would make a severe mess and clog up the machine.” What is obvious is that waste cannot be ground up and ejected from the machine at the typical exit velocities of leaf blower vacuums of 100 to 240 miles per hour. Also important is that the waste capture method must be resistant to the high vacuum that typical leaf blower/vacuum/mulcher products can produce without excessively clogging. As stated, there are many low cost, unique and novel features present in the scope of this invention that allows the conventional leaf/blower/mulcher to be utilized. These features will be detailed in the following sections.
It is therefore the object of the present invention to provide an accessory attachment for existing leaf blower/vacuums that offer a user a facilitated means to collect animal waste. The present invention accomplishes this through the uses of a mobile collection chamber designed for collecting animal matter of various consistencies powered by the suction created by an existing leaf blower/vacuum that attaches to an interchangeable mounting point.